What Is Left the Daughter (16 page)

"For the record, Mr. Hillyer," Magistrate Junkins said, "we must note why the Navy Secretary of Canada would make such a call. For the record, please."

"Well, sir, all right. The facts are these. The Newfoundland car ferry
Caribou
sailed from the terminal at North Sydney, Nova Scotia, destination light-to-light was her home port at Port aux Basques, Newfoundland. They sailed at about midnight."

"This was October 13–14, then?"

"October 13–14, yes, sir."

"Proceed."

"It happened at about—according to newspaper accounts, which I see you have on your desk there. It happened about three-forty-five
A.M.
, blackout enforced on all ships, when a torpedo slammed into the
Caribou.
My wife, Constance Bates-Hillyer, had traveled to visit her friend Zoe Fielding. There was the christening of her grandchild, and Constance had promised to attend. She was taking a vacation, is how she put it. That was the circumstances. And my wife was a victim of that attack. Constance Bates-Hillyer, possibly killed outright, but finally put in the sea, Lord have mercy on her soul."

"Take your time, Mr. Hillyer."

"It wasn't so much the telephone call in general. Specifically, it was mention of my wife's wardrobe trunk."

"I don't understand."

"Navy Secretary Macdonald said her personal wardrobe trunk had been identified. Naturally, my wife'd sewn her name and address on the lining—who wouldn't have? Anyway, Secretary Macdonald said, 'Her body's not yet recovered, but the trunk has been,' and those were his exact words."

In my chair in the front row, I closed my eyes and pictured my aunt's black 2 × 2 × 3 Hartmann cushion-top wardrobe trunk, which had small brass studs along the seams, two wide black hinges in back, brass cornices and a brass lock. She'd purchased the trunk in Truro, and when it arrived by bus, Donald brought it home and set it on the dining room table. Donald, Tilda and I stood there when she first opened it, and she said, "
Wallah!
" like a magician, and she showed off its three inside drawers, its wooden dowels and five wooden hangers. "I looked at any number of wardrobe trunks," she said, "but this one all but said, 'Take me to Newfoundland!'"

"But as for radio static?" Magistrate Junkins said. "As to the relevance of radio static. By the way, Miss Teachout, are you keeping pace?"

I forgot to mention that Lenore Teachout was the stenographer and sat to the front and right of Magistrate Junkins.

"Yes. I had all of January and February at court in Halifax, you might remember," she said. "I'm well trained."

"Continue, then, Mr. Hillyer."

"We had the Grundig-Majestic on the kitchen table," my uncle said. "Bad weather, and I was trying to get a clear human voice. We'd get snippets. We'd get parts of updates and bulletins: 'the sinking of the ferry
Caribou'—
static static static—and then 'Axis U-boats plying their grim trade, no common humanity'—then more static. It can be like that with a radio, but that day it seemed outright cruelty. You see, whenever I'd put 'Angels of the Highest Order' pieces by Mr. Beethoven on the gramophone—Mr. Beethoven's a German. I'm not without appreciation for that particular German mind. Anyone who knows me can attest to that fact."

"Mr. Hillyer—"

"No, no, no, listen. I say all of that because my gramophone is old, and the recordings I had were scratchy. That's not an entirely unpleasant sound, not to my ear at least. The scratchiness, I mean. It makes you feel like the music has wended its way forward from another century. But
radio
static, now that's a different thing. Radio static's democratic, that I admit. It intervenes on good and bad news alike, eh? Terrifying war news or trivial information on what to purchase and in which shops. I understand all of that."

"And the point of this disquisition—?"

"The
point,
sir, is that when you're trying to get vital news about a loved one—"

"Sir—"

"—static intervenes. And that afternoon, before Secretary Macdonald telephoned, there was just too much goddamned static, sir."

Yet during the couple of days after the
Caribou
had been sunk, plenty of information had gotten through loud and clear. Personal testimonies of survivors were even quoted on the radio. To this day, I recall what one survivor, a Mr. Leonard Salter, said: "—right over the trough of a heavy swell, I was near a lifeboat and for an instant the light from floating parts of the burning ferry was such—and I've always had grand eyesight anyway—but I could see on the deck of the
Laughing Cow
its sailors bustling fast into the hatch. The submarine dropped out of sight then and I got pulled up into a lifeboat. Cries, wails, pleadings from the water all around. Prayers—"

The captain of the
Laughing
Cow—the U-boat that torpedoed the
Caribou—
was Ulrich Graf. His cowardice was reported in yet another broadcast. Once the
Caribou
had gone under, Graf took his sub down and directly beneath the survivors, who were in lifeboats, scattered on rafts, holding on to planks, holding on to anything at all for dear life. Graf had figured that the escort ship
Grandmere
wouldn't drop depth charges there. And in that, Graf was correct.

"Are you capable of continuing, Mr. Hillyer?" the magistrate asked.

Just before he clasped his head in his hands and rocked forward and back, forward and back, nearly falling off the witness chair, my uncle said, "Everything I love most used to happen every day: wake up, see my wife's face, maybe an improvement on a sled or toboggan already in mind. Eat break fast. Look at the sea. Go on out to the shed. Come in for lunch. But not that day. The day Hans Mohring came to make amends, that day was hell on earth. Two, three, four months earlier? I couldn't've found a day like that on the map. And now that hellish day's my permanent address."

Tilda returned to the library around eleven
A.M.
and sat in a back corner. Magistrate Junkins shifted his attention from his notes to my uncle, removed his reading glasses and said, "Now, Mr. Hillyer, if I understand correctly, you're something of an expert in Navy battles and have more than a general interest in the fates of seagoing vessels off Nova Scotia and Newfoundland."

"Naturally, expertise in the subject has caused torment."

"So you'd say that your mind was steeped in, or at least preoccupied with, said subject. I quote a neighbor of yours—"

"Which neighbor is that?"

"—who remains anonymous," Magistrate Junkins said in a reprimanding tone. "I quote"—he put on his spectacles again and read from a notebook—"'Donald Hillyer became a walking history lesson, often of the browbeating sort. And this lesson was unfolding on a day-by-day basis. He was fairly steaming about the U-boat sinkings. Steaming like a—'"

"My wife Constance's lungs are filled with seawater."

Magistrate Junkins closed his eyes, sighed deeply and followed that with shorter sighs. He continued reading: "'Steaming like a—'"

"Feelings of gloom and spitefulness, that's what took over," my uncle said. "How difficult is that to understand, sir?"

"'Steaming like a teapot on the boil.' Mr. Hillyer, is it true that the walls of your work shed are covered with newspaper articles about recent tragedies at sea?"

"They are German-caused murders of great proportions, whatever else you might call them." My uncle sipped some water.

There in the library I pictured the walls of the shed, all but completely covered with newspaper headlines and articles and photographs. You read the incidents left to right like a book, in the chronological order in which they happened. All the U-boat attacks off Atlantic Canada were represented—the ferries lost, the number of casualties, the number of dead and missing and presumed lost, photographs of people waiting at docks and wharfs, of church gatherings and wakes.

For instance, on the wall on the immediate left as you walked in, headlines about the Battle of the St. Lawrence, as it was popularly known, which occurred on the night of May 11, 1942, when
U-553
torpedoed and sunk the British freighter
Nicoya
off the Gaspe and the Dutch ship
Leto
in the lower reaches of the St. Lawrence River. Both ships were bound for England. That attack roiled my uncle in the extreme.

Now, Marlais, I won't inventory the seventeen merchant ships sunk by U-boats, plus an American merchant ship and two Canadian warships that were sunk near the St. Lawrence over sixteen months, starting around May of 1942—and the
Caribou
right in the center of all of it. But before the
Caribou
went down at sea, each time any sort of vessel was attacked, up went an article on the shed wall. And since I was working in that shed long hours every day, I couldn't help but practically memorize them. Against my will, almost, I was becoming a student of these incidents. The shed walls became my harrowing reading life, you might say. "The walls ran the gamut," as my aunt put it, "from you-wouldn't-think-it-could-get-sadder to sadder-yet. 'Lost at sea' has its own strange quality. Out to the cemetery, you put on the stone 'Sacred to the Memory,' of course. But since the body's not in the ground, it's somehow a more hollow feeling. Read the newspapers. Listen to the radio. Talk to your neighbors. Even sermons in church. These past few years it's as if the whole of Atlantic Canada feels hollow."

And then came the incident that really sent my uncle into a tailspin. On Sunday, October 11—my aunt was already on her travels—
U-106
sunk the British freighter
Waterton,
which had been traveling from Corner Brook, Newfoundland, to Sydney, Nova Scotia, carrying a cargo of paper. The
Waterton
went down in seven minutes, but as one article said, "The crew was rescued and nobody got a foot wet."

"Broad daylight in the Cabot Strait," my uncle had said. "That's in our back yard! Constance is traveling those waters! I wish she'd wire us."

"I'm sure she's fine, Uncle Donald," I had said, weakly.

"You know what I dreamed? Good Lord. I dreamed about stacks of paper on board the
Waterton.
In my dream, I saw it as ten thousand Bibles not printed, ten thousand personal letters never sent. Don't say I had this dream to anyone in Middle Economy, all right? Kindly don't mention it."

But back to the hearing. The library was quiet again. My uncle took another sip of water.

"Yes," he said, now looking at Magistrate Junkins. "I was steaming. Yes, sir, indeed yes. I was steaming. As any good Canadian should have been."

"Every good Canadian did not murder this German student," Magistrate Junkins said. "I'm obligated to put that fine a point on it. Let me remind you that the reason we are here. Today. In this library. Are your
actions,
Mr. Hillyer. And how the province of Nova Scotia determines the consequences of those actions. And recommendations to such—a profound responsibility—begin and end with me."

He shuffled some papers and stared out the nearest window, lost for a moment to the rain, it seemed. Then he said, "I'm afraid no one's thought to provide me with a glass of water yet."

Cornelia went into the library's small pantry and returned with a glass of water, which she set in front of Magistrate Junkins.

"Thank you."

To which Cornelia replied, "You only needed to ask."

"Now, then, Mr. Hillyer," Magistrate Junkins said, "in establishing your state of mind on the last day of Hans Mohring's life, can you recall when you decided which—
method,
let us say. That is, how you would press an attack on Hans Mohring?"

"Are you asking was it 'thought out'?" my uncle asked.

"I refer to your use of a toboggan runner," Magistrate Junkins said, "as a weapon of choice."

"I chose it because it was leaning against the shed wall closest to the door when I decided to go see if Hans Mohring had come to my house yet."

"Simple as that."

"My hand on the Bible," my uncle said.

At this point Tilda more or less cried out, then gained enough composure to walk to the shelves, take down the
Webster's,
carry it over and set it in front of her father on the table. "Swear to me, Pop"—she forced his right hand onto the dictionary and pressed her own hand down on his—"swear to me on his favorite book that you didn't mean to kill my husband. Swear to me you couldn't help yourself, because of Mom dying. Because of Mother being killed. Father, swear to me it was all a conspiracy of the brain."

"We will take a recess—
now!
" Magistrate Junkins said.

He stood, went through the pantry and out the back door of the library, but it took a long time for anyone else to leave, and it wasn't just the pouring rain. Though finally, Tilda and her father were alone together.

Marlais, your mother never told me what they said to each other. If anything was said.

Before the afternoon session began, Magistrate Junkins announced, "If you have sandwiches or any other such thing, kindly keep to the back." He sat down. And it was true, quite a number of people had packed lunches or had slipped out and gone to the bakery and returned with a sandwich or slices of honey bread or even halibut cakes. I noticed that Cornelia had left the library earlier, right after she'd brought Magistrate Junkins a glass of water. She figured that during a recess people would want to get something to eat at her bakery.

"Now, to begin with," Magistrate Junkins said, "Mr. Hillyer has informed me he has an announcement to make, and I'm going to allow that." He nodded to my uncle.

My uncle said, "I'm officially leaving my sled and toboggan concern to my nephew Wyatt. He and I haven't had the time to discuss this, but those are my intentions."

Now, two things about that statement, Marlais. First, it might seem a separate thing altogether from the grievous matter at hand, yet everyone was interested—you could tell from their faces. They knew Donald would soon be off to prison. No doubt about that. They didn't know exactly when, or to which prison, but they knew my uncle would not be building sleds and toboggans for some time, possibly never. Second, considering the fact that in his written statement my uncle had mentioned that I'd fetched Hans Mohring to the house on the evening he was killed, there was no doubt a high probability in everyone's mind that I had witnessed the murder. The question then was, did I do anything to help or hinder, and would I confess, and would I be going to prison, too? If I did confess, what would become of the sled and toboggan business—all of local concern and curiosity.